What is a restaurant POS?
A restaurant POS (point of sale) is the software that records what a guest ordered, sends it to the kitchen, takes payment, and posts the result to your sales records. Modern restaurant POS platforms also run the ordering channels around the counter — kiosk, QR, online and delivery — so that every order arrives on one menu and one kitchen screen.
The difference between a cash register and a POS is what happens after the sale. A register records money. A POS records what was sold, by whom, at which station, from which channel, against which recipe and which tax jurisdiction — which is what makes end-of-day reconciliation, menu decisions and stock control possible at all.
Why the offline question comes first
Most restaurant POS systems are cloud applications with a browser in front of them. When the connection drops, the browser has nothing to talk to, and service stops at the counter — during the exact two hours that pay for the week.
ThaliPOS is built the other way round. Every store runs a small hub on its own network, and the counter station, kiosk and kitchen display all talk to that, never directly to the cloud. Orders and cash sales queue on the hub and sync up exactly once when the connection returns. We run an automated offline-survival test on every release rather than asking you to take it on trust.
Card-present payments still need the internet — that is the card networks, not us — but cash keeps flowing and the kitchen never stops. How offline-first restaurant POS works →
What runs on the counter station
Touch first, keyboard when it is faster
Built for the 7pm rushTouch-first layouts for new staff, and keyboard shortcuts for the cashier who knows the menu cold. Speed at the counter is a training cost you only pay once.
Composite plates as a real item type
Not faked with modifiersA thali is one price and eleven decisions. Pick two curries and a bread, one price on the check, and the kitchen still sees every component on the ticket.
Weigh-and-pay by the gram
Mithai and sweetsA serial scale rings the exact weight onto the check, priced per kilo, printed where the customer can check it. No mental math with a queue building.
Barcode scanning
Packaged goodsA plain keyboard-wedge scanner handles UPC and EAN codes, GS1-128, and the variable-weight barcodes that come off a deli scale. No vendor SDK required.
Parked checks and table tags
Dine-in serviceHold a check, tag it to a table, add to it across a meal, and split or settle it when the table is ready.
Cent-exact end of day
Cash includedBusiness-day close with drawer counts and a Z-report that reconciles cash tenders, not just card settlements.
One menu behind every ordering channel
The expensive failure in restaurant technology is not the POS — it is the four systems around it that each hold their own copy of the menu. A price change becomes five edits, and the one you forget is the one that loses money all month.
In ThaliPOS the menu is authored once in the back office and published to every surface as a signed snapshot. The counter, the kiosk, the QR menu, the web storefront and the delivery channels all read from it.
- Self-order kiosk — takes the line off your counter, in your branding.
- QR ordering — printed codes open your menu on the guest's phone, no app to install.
- Online ordering — your own web storefront for pickup, with no marketplace commission.
- Delivery marketplaces — DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub orders land on the same kitchen screen, with per-channel menus, per-channel pricing and a pause switch for when you are buried.
- Kitchen display — every channel above arrives here, routed to the right station.
Payments, without card data
Card-present payments run on Stripe readers with tap and chip. Card data goes from the reader to Stripe directly and never passes through ThaliPOS software — there are no card-number fields anywhere in the codebase, and an automated check fails the build if anyone ever adds one. That is an architecture decision, not a policy promise.
Payouts land in your own connected account. Refunds are issued from the POS by a manager, against the original payment.
Which restaurants this is built for
ThaliPOS is general-purpose restaurant POS software, with deliberate depth in the workflows that Indian restaurants use every service and that most POS systems make you improvise around: composite thali plates, half and full portions, per-diner spice levels, weigh-and-pay mithai counters, and kitchen tickets in the language the cook actually reads.
That covers thali houses and dine-in, dosa and tiffin centers, biryani houses, chaat corners, sweet shops, Indo-Chinese kitchens, catering operations and multi-brand cloud kitchens. See how each of those is served →
Hardware you already own, or can buy anywhere
A tablet or small PC with a browser for the counter. One small hub in the back. Any screen the line can read for the kitchen. Standard ESC/POS receipt printers and a cash drawer that kicks on tender. A Stripe reader for cards, and a serial scale and keyboard-wedge scanner if you sell by weight or by barcode.
You do not buy hardware from us. We tell you exactly what works and you buy it wherever it is cheapest. If you already own screens and printers, we would rather you kept them. The full hardware list →